Digital video recorders are implemented as client devices to receive video and/or audio content in the form of broadcast and/or interactive television entertainment and information. A digital video recorder includes a hard disk memory so that a viewer can record multiple television programs and other content of interest to the viewer. A digital video recorder also provides a viewer with convenient functionality, such as the ability to pause the broadcast of a television program and return to watch the program, while still in progress, from the point at which it was paused.
To implement this functionality, a digital video recorder includes a pause buffer to record a current broadcast of a paused program, and to playback the broadcast for viewing from the beginning of the pause event when a viewer returns to continue watching the program. A pause buffer is typically configured as a circular, or ring, buffer on the hard disk memory and the amount of time which a television program can be delayed is dependent upon how much storage space is allocated for the pause buffer. When a pause buffer reaches capacity, such as after thirty minutes for example, the content corresponding to the beginning of a pause event will be written over. This example pause buffer is a sliding thirty minute recorder of the most recently displayed content.
Additionally, when a viewer changes from one broadcast channel to another, any content stored in the pause buffer is deleted (commonly referred to as “flushing” the pause buffer). A viewer can only access content maintained in the pause buffer for the duration of time that the viewer watches a particular channel without changing the channel. Further, conventional systems do not enable viewer management of the video content stored in a pause buffer, such as selecting which content in the pause buffer to record, or other viewer-input controls, such as fast-forward, rewind, and the like.
Accordingly, for television-based entertainment and information systems, there is a need for techniques to manage content temporarily stored in a short-term content buffer, such as in a pause buffer in a digital video recording system.